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the office of General William Sullivan as a law-student, and, after completing his studies, was admitted a member of the Suffolk County bar. The profession, however, was not congenial to his feelings, and he has never pursued its practice. Early in 1828, he published a prospectus of "The Emerald and Baltimore Literary Gazette," of which he was to be the editor, and on the 29th of March of that year appeared the first number. In 1829, he was married to a daughter of ChiefJustice Cranch, of Washington. In 1830, he published The Valley of the Nashaway, and other Poems; and in 1839, Athenia of Damascus; Geraldine; and his miscellaneous poetical writings. In the winter of 1840-41, he delivered a course of literary lectures in New York, before the American Institute. He now resides in Washington, D.C.

SPIRIT OF BEAUTY.

The Spirit of Beauty unfurls her light,
And wheels her course in a joyous flight;
I know her track through the balmy air,
By the blossoms that cluster and whiten there;
She leaves the tops of the mountains green,
And gems the valley with crystal sheen.

At morn, I know where she rested at night,
For the roses are gushing with dewy delight;
Then she mounts again, and round her flings
A shower of light from her crimson wings;
Till the spirit is drunk with the music on high,
That silently fills it with ecstasy.

At noon she hies to a cool retreat,

Where bowering elms over waters meet;

She dimples the wave where the green leaves dip,
As it smilingly curls like a maiden's lip

When her tremulous bosom would hide, in vain,
From her lover, the hope that she loves again.

At eve she hangs o'er the western sky
Dark clouds for a glorious canopy,
And round the skirts of their deepen'd fold
She paints a border of purple and gold,
Where the lingering sunbeams love to stay
When their god in his glory has pass'd away.

She hovers around us at twilight hour,

When her presence is felt with the deepest power;
She silvers the landscape, and crowds the stream
With shadows that fit like a fairy dream;
Then wheeling her flight through the gladden'd air,
The Spirit of Beauty is everywhere.

SUNRISE, FROM MOUNT WASHINGTON.

The laughing hours have chased away the night,
Plucking the stars out from her diadem:-

And now the blue-eyed Morn, with modest grace,
Looks through her half-drawn curtains in the east,
Blushing in smiles, and glad as infancy.

And see, the foolish Moon, but now so vain
Of borrow'd beauty, how she yields her charms,
And, pale with envy, steals herself away!
The clouds have put their gorgeous livery on,
Attendant on the day: the mountain-tops
Have lit their beacons, and the vales below
Send up a welcoming: no song of birds,
Warbling to charm the air with melody,
Floats on the frosty breeze; yet Nature hath
The very soul of music in her looks!
The sunshine and the shade of poetry.

I stand upon thy lofty pinnacle,

Temple of Nature! and look down with awe
On the wide world beneath me, dimly seen;
Around me crowd the giant sons of earth,
Fix'd on their old foundations, unsubdued;
Firm as when first rebellion bade them rise
Unrifted to the Thunderer: now they seem
A family of mountains, clustering round
Their hoary patriarch, emulously watching
To meet the partial glances of the day.
Far in the glowing east the flickering light,
Mellow'd by distance, with the blue sky blending,
Questions the eye with ever-varying forms.

The sun comes up! away the shadows fling From the broad hills; and, hurrying to the west, Sport in the sunshine till they die away.

The many beauteous mountain-streams leap down,
Out-welling from the clouds, and sparkling light
Dances along with their perennial flow.
And there is beauty in yon river's path,
The glad Connecticut! I know her well,

By the white veil she mantles o'er her charms:
At times she loiters by a ridge of hills,
Sportfully hiding; then again with glee
Out-rushes from her wild-wood lurking-place.
Far as the eye can bound, the ocean-waves,

And hills and rivers, mountains, lakes, and woods,
And all that hold the faculty entranced,
Bathed in a flood of glory, float in air,
And sleep in the deep quietude of joy.

There is an awful stillness in this place,
A Presence that forbids to break the spell,
Til! the heart pour its agony in tears.
But I must drink the vision while it lasts;
For even now the curling vapors rise,
Wreathing their cloudy coronals, to grace
These towering summits-bidding me away;
But often shall my heart turn back again,
Thou glorious eminence! and when oppress'd,
And aching with the coldness of the world,
Find a sweet resting-place and home with thee.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, one of the most original writers in our country, was born in Boston in the year 1803, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1821. On leaving college, he devoted his time to theological studies, and was settled as pastor of the Second Unitarian Church in his native city. But, his views respecting some of the Christian ordinances undergoing a change, he gave up the ministry, and retired to the quiet village of Concord, Mass., devoting himself to his favorite studies, the nature of man and his relations to the universe.

The following are Mr. Emerson's chief publications: Man Thinking, an oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1837; Literary Ethics, an oration; and Nature-an Essay, in 1838; The Dial, a magazine of literature, philosophy, and history, which he commenced in 1840 and continued for four years; The Method of Nature, Man the Reformer, three lectures on the times, and the first series of his essays, in 1841; lectures on the New England Reformers, the Young American, and Negro Emancipation in the West Indies, in 1844; a volume of Poems, in 1846, and the lectures, delivered during his visit to England in 1849, which form the volume called Representative Men.

Such are Mr. Emerson's principal writings. As an author he never can be popular, for he is too abstruse and too metaphysical, and has too little of human sympathy to reach the heart; while he is at times so quaint or so obscure that one is no little puzzled to find out his meaning.1

THE COMPENSATIONS OF CALAMITY.

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out, that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. We cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, "Up and onward for evermore!" We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look backwards.

1 An English critic thus speaks of him:-"Mr. Emerson possesses so many zharacteristics of genius that his want of universality is the more to be regretted: the leading feature of his mind is intensity; he is deficient in heart-sympathy." Again, “It is better for a man to tell his story as Mr. Irving, Mr. Hawthorne, or Mr. Longfellow does, than to adopt the style Emersonian, in which thoughts may be buried so deep that common seekers shall be unable to find them."

And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed; breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener, is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men.

TRAVELLING.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up at Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions; but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

ness.

But the rage of travelling is itself only a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and the universal system of education fosters restlessOur minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean to, and follow the past and the distant as the

eyes of a maid follow her mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

SELF-RELIANCE.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when he performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach him. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much.

GOOD-BYE, PROUD WORLD.

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home:
Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean's brine,

Long I've been toss'd like the driven foam;
But now, proud world! I'm going home.

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face;
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth's averted eye;
To supple Office, low and high;
To crowded halls, to court and street;
To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
To those who go, and those who come;
Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home.

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